Sometimes I'm travelling and need to work without having internet. So sometimes i need the manual offline. Would be nice to have an updated manual inside the software for each new update.

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Yes... but no. Sorry guys but the manual was a real nightmare (that's why it was totally out dated after several months / 1 year). It's up to you to copy / paste a lesson from the online guide if you're about to be offline.

I don't always agree with Adobe, but here I do. *Gasp* I'm chilling when I remember all the wasted time for a simple page setup... Plus, it was damn heavy (471 pages of images and text). Just look how long it is to still download TVPaint 10 guide : http://static.tvpaint.com/downloads/man ... manual.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Adobe is a perfect example of not Bad but Worst Practice. In the 90's Photoshop was sold with a printed manual, a really well done piece of information. When they started their CS branding, they abandoned the printed manual, but still included the same concise manual in the installation. It worked well, was searchable, and really useful (for all Adobe programs). Then, at CS 4 or 5, this changed. Pressing help would only start a website trying to connect to an Adobe server - but not showing the manual. Instead, several popups indicate that "your database will be updated" and other nonsense, and you only get pages with how-tos of absolutely nothing you'd be interested in, and any search would only lead to posts in user forums. What the hell?

I could guess that this might have been done to spot copied licences. But what's the sense in crippling a software for each legitimate user as well? This is not DRM, this is plain nonsense. (And Adobe doesn't ever listen to any complaint.)

I don't insist on PDF, but I really expect the documentation of the software being installed physically right beside the software.

Elodie wrote: It's up to you to copy / paste a lesson from the online guide if you're about to be offline.

I can understand the reason for having only an online user manual with no PDF or Printed version, leaving it up to the individual user to download it and convert to PDF or to print it out if they want to do so, BUT the format of the current User Manual makes that very tedious and difficult. Referring to this topic:

"Each section of the Documentation repeats the 10 page index ... the whole ten page index repeats in front of every section of the user documentation. It is not a competent, professional approach. It is ridiculous to suggest that the user should [manually] copy & paste each individual section of the documentation - there are hundreds of sections, with the ten page index repeated in between each section."

Even if the user manually prints each section , and the user's printer interface gives the option to only print a certain range of pages (say out of a total of 10 pages , you only need to print pages 7 - through - 10 ) , it doesn't work properly with the way the current TVPaint 11 User Manual is formatted. See the attached file as an example: in this case I wanted to print or make a PDF of the section on the Out-Of-Pegs function. If I printed the whole thing it would be a total of 10 pages, including 7 pages that are only the repeat of the User Manual Index ... so I only need to print or convert to PDF the last three pages , 7 - 10 , which include the actual information on the OOP function that I want to print out or convert to PDF . But look what happens: most of page 7 is taken up with the last part of the Index and only a small portion of page 7 is the start of the section explaining the OOP function ... but I need Page 7 to be included , along with Page 8 , Page 9, Page 10, so the section on OOP function is complete. Having the whole Index repeat in front of each section of the User Manual is very frustrating.

"Why don't you simply copy paste text and images you need in a software like Open office ?"

Copying & Pasting pages from the TVPaint User Guide to Open Office did not work . I also tried copying & pasting pages to Microsoft Word and to Apple TextEdit , but those did not work either. The formatting of the page is not retained and the text is white on white , so even if the formatting was correct , the user would have to manually copy & paste each page and then manually select all text and change the text color from white to black so it would show up.

Elodie wrote:Then Markus is right, I did not read you were using TVPaint 10.

Just to clarify, I'm using TVP 11, but use the 10 manual when working offline.
Documentation for software is a lot of work. I sympathize with your reasons, and understand that you guys rather use your time on improving the software. It's kind of hard to weigh the importance of a thing like that. A manual is very important to me as I still have lots to learn and am probably just able to use a small fraction of what TVpaint can do. For experienced users it might not be a big effort learning the adjustments to previous versions, but for a new user it might mean a lot of time spent copying of lessons they might need when offline.

I would like to add that I really appreciate how approachable the TVpaint team is. You guys are awesome. I feel we are all in the same boat and want TVpaint to be as good as possible.
I feel you guys are listening to us users and this informs how you improve your software. I do feel that making sure that things become easier to learn and use is just as important if not more important than adding and improving features of the software itself. Otherwise you might have worked really hard on something that might just reach a few people.

With v10 and earlier versions, the manual was 100% PDF and we faced a lot of users complaints and problems :
- each time we wanted to update or fix a mistake in the PDF, we had to prepare a software update and include it within. At the end, there was no way to update the manual quickly & easily.
- more and more people were asking for video tutorials.
- we had to be careful to have/keep the same layout of english, french & japanese languages. Otherwise it's not easy to say to someone go to this page #. Much more complex than one can imagine as french usually require much more words than english + for japanese : it was depending on the sentence and the structure of the sentence is quite different.
- Everything was done in LibreOffice because I started to write the manuals in OpenOffice more than 10 years ago (as freelance I wanted to earn money). But free software have their counterparts : the layout of the page was not the same when one was opening the file on a PC, Mac or Linux ... (bug ?) It made everything very complex.
- Now let say we wanted to add an option in the software. We had to add a chapter in both french & english files. ok.
But our japanese translator is working remotly from his home and there was no way for him to know automatically we changed something ... so we had to send emails with french/english files (and be careful that noone would change them again while he was translating the changes)
- updating the software was taking ages because in each build we had the PDF manual included (it's much bigger that the software)
So with demo, release, beta version + Mac, Windows, Linux + 32/64 bits ... each update was several GB to upload. not easy and expensive (bandwidth, server size, ...) + slowing down our whole internet connexion.

The "only" good point was that it was a PDF printable manual.

So with the v11 we decided to change this.
With an online manual, we can :
- update, change and translate anything at anytime and see it on the website the next day (all is stored in a database so ... ).
- the translators can work from anywhere without paying attention to the other people work, they can works at the same time without conflict.
- they can also use a better search engine and even find & track the changes that were made in an other language.
- we can prepare (and are currently preparing) other languages without any big issue.
- we can include here and there video tutorials.
- when something is not yet translated, we can still display automatically the corresponding english version.

We currently miss the PDF export and printability, but I keep good hope it can be improved later and sooner.
Transforming web page into PDF is not that easy.
Maybe we can also find a way to show/hide the left menu to have something more easy to read or navigate. Will see.

- - - -

What I'm wondering now is that there is perhaps an easy way to make the whole web pages system available offline (like downloading a .zip file with everything + the date information). I will check later and come back to you.

I do feel that making sure that things become easier to learn and use is just as important if not more important than adding and improving features of the software itself. Otherwise you might have worked really hard on something that might just reach a few people.